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From today’s Washington Post. The Irish potato famine was caused by the British over reliance on the free market. Then there’s this: “Did the British government cause the famine? One way to consider the question is to pose another one. Did the George W. Bush administration cause Hurricane Katrina? No, nature did. But perhaps 300 years of American history had created a situation whereby a particular group of people, African Americans in the poorest quarters of New Orleans, were more vulnerable than most to that storm. And perhaps the administration, for political and historical reasons, was not inclined to be closely in touch with or responsive to the well-being of that population. Perhaps the inadequacy of the initial response to the natural disaster was compounded by streaks of racial prejudice and ideological blind spots, as well as by good old-fashioned incompetence.”

A major problem we have is trying to figure out how the other guys think. We like to think we are conservatives but we really are not against change. Free markets produce constant change. Old ways are replaced with new ways. So we ‘conservatives’ want to preserve constant change.

Progressives are opposed to progress, indeed almost any kind of change. Progress means some people get new jobs that put other people out of work. Computers replace typewriters; cell phones replace pay phones; online news replaces newspapers; USB drives replace floppy disks. People don’t keep buggy whips in their huggies.

Progressives want the environment kept the same as it was before Lief Erickson discovered America. Their labor unions want work rules to keep employers from changing how jobs are done. Progressives want to bring back social classes. They simply don’t want anything to change.

Liberals/Progressives/Socialists/Communists keep changing what they call themselves because they have a really bad track record. They never come close to reaching their goals. Progressives believe in their own set of historical facts – as revealed by the logic of their philosophy – that never really happened. Their facts about Katrina are not true history. Their facts about Staten Island hurricane relief are not true history.

Progressives feel they are entitled to their own facts. They believe philosophy creates history. Therefore the refuse to study history, except to find proof that their philosophy is correct. They refuse to believe that philosophers are guys ‘hired’ by tyrants to justify the tyranny du jour.

Free markets require accurate knowledge about the market place in order to know what people want to buy. We know that there is a difference between what people want to eat and what they should eat; between what they want to drink and what they should drink; between how they want to play and how they should play; between reality and philosophy.

Progressives think that rulers are leaders; captains who set the course of the ship of state. Free markets require that individuals have rights; progressives tell people how to live and therefore no one needs rights because they will just use these ‘rights’ to make bad decisions when the state has already made the best decision for them.

The description of this video and the role of “HER” reminds me of the story about a play many years ago called “She.” A theater critic came home and told his wife he had to write 200 words about “She.” The wife said, “No darling, about “her.”

That story can’t be found on Google. Too bad. That’s why we are losing our culture.

Anyway, I wonder what they think this will accomplish after the movie, Avatar.

We all have to learn the left wing version of history. The floggings will continue until we get it right. I see the future as an updated version of Brave New World. Interestingly enough, Brave New World was Huxley’s version of the America he visited in 1929. He hadn’t anticipated many new developments like birth control pills and in vitro fertilization.

There seems to be increased focus on global warming by the left. I wonder if this is related to the growing evidence that it is a fraud. We might be seeing a version of the martyr role in religion.

Big articles all this week in my local rag about the climate crisis. Today the big story was some government report that warns of the extreme hazards of increasing climate changes if we don’t do everything we can to make things better, but oddly doesn’t really get into any practical suggestions, or analyze any of the potential costs of their proposals.

The video game is just one more brick in the wall of indoctrination that is designed to seperate our children’s minds from the possibility that there are any alternatives to collectivist ideology.

Nothing says “fiscal responsibility” like the government blowing tax dollars on politically correct, gender specific video games. Do we really need aliens to do the work that black females of Earth won’t do?

— “Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California is one of my favorite places on Earth. When the glaciers, which formed its sheer
vertical walls, receded some ten thousand years ago, they left a large lake in the upper half of the valley, dammed up behind the detritus of gravel and boulders deposited by the melting ice at the lower margin of the active glacier. Over a few thousand years, the lake silted up, creating the flat floor of the valley. When tourists first started visiting the valley in large numbers, less than a century ago, the valley floor was a mix of forest and meadow, with a large, clear lake at the upper end of the valley, reflecting the spectacular, granite faces which surround it- – Cloud’s Rest, Half Dome, North Dome, and Washington Column. Today the forests have taken over more of the valley floor, and the siltation of Mirror Lake continues, so that even in years of normal precipitation the lake is reduced to an expanse of mud with a small stream meandering through one side during half the summer and fall.
— A conservation ethic, dedicated to the preservation of the biosphere in its status quo, would be just as lethal- – both to ourselves and to the rest of the system- – as it would be to pave the entire planet with concrete and asphalt. If we were to attempt to preserve Yosemite Valley, unchanged forever, which Yosemite should be preserved: the Glacial Lake, the silted marshland of a few thousand years ago, the Yosemite our grandparents knew, or the Yosemite to come, with very little meadow space and no Mirror Lake?
— How shall we use and shape the planet?”
– J. P. Valk, ‘Doomsday Has Been Cancelled’ (1976) –

}}} I predict it will not be popular with gamers, and the designers will wonder why.

Naw. They’ll KNOW why: people just aren’t READY for games that reflect truth and reality, y’know? They just want to keep their foolish illusions of individuality, common sense, rational self-interest, and critical thinking. They’re not ready to surrender to the Proper Ideas.

The Potato was ‘discovered’ by the Spanish in the mountains of Peru whilst they were liberating gold from Inca temples. Potatos grow best in cool climates – eg Maine and Idaho but not Hawaii or Florida.

The ‘mini-ice age’ began in Europe in the 1500s and lasted 200-300 years. Crops that grew in the Medieval Warm Period (1000-1500) failed because the weather was colder. The potato saved Europe from famine during the mini ice age.

When the mini ice age ended, the potato crop failed and farmers could have returned to what they grew in the Medieval Warm Period. However, many new laws existed in Europe that required growing the potato. These laws were passed to protect the farmers from landlords who would rather grow sheep than grow farmers. When the mini ice age ended, the farmer-protection laws killed the farmers or forced them to leave the soil. Some came to America and were able to grow anything they pleased (for a while).